alkaloid27

But has anyone really experienced anything of it in a significant way yet? I've only noticed that the DB are after me, but I dunno why... everything else is exactly the same after 3 characters.

??? Was better, or IS better? I don't understand this paradoxical comment... LOTR had elves the way they're meant to be, but Skyrim (which is TES) does them better, even though TES 'kinda ruins elves'? o_O

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that. It would come out looking like an elf, so resembling an elf, but with Nord abilities? I think it's a good prospect for a mod. Say, the player as a half-race being from a Cyrodiil orphanage, in Skyrim looking for their birth parents... nice twisty turny quest-line that reveals some long forgotten prophesy that the Dragonborn would be the offspring of said races etc etc. In any case, my original comment is still a good one, I think. Bethesda could have included half-races with mixed physical and racial attributes -- in fact, if I were to mod the races of Skyrim, I would try to consider player preference and rather than overrwite or replace any specific race, I would create an additional or alternative version in the form of a half-race in order to preserve lore and retain a playable mod for players who do like the vanilla elves/orc et al but would also like the choice of an 'aesthetically pleasing' character. Personally, I've always wanted to be an orc female, one that kirk would do. But never mind certain elements like the brow or teeth, they always end up looking rather 'unfortunate' -- if I can't connect with my character, I can't play with him/her. PS, I tried to take a screenie, but instead it print screen creates a 'testcamera path' folder?!? Will try again :(

My female Dunmer character took me hours to make. The only 'mod' I have installed is smooth females (because like others, I found wrinkles to be a bit over done). However, the female faces are now too smooth, some definition would still be nice. I'm not at home right now so can't upload a screenie, but I am very happy with the result. The sliders are not as fine as in Oblivion, but the presets are customisable to a degree beyond just switching out main features. It takes patience and a hulluva lot of time, but you can do quite a bit. I'll get a screenie up soon as to show what I mean. I also have to say that ALL races seem to have become HD variants of their Morrowind selves, which is really nice. I was disappointed with the lack of individuality in Oblivion and the cartoony look, given the dark and torn histories of Tamriel -- just seemed a bit out of place to have the puffy, oddly coloured and child-friendly faces. What would be nice, would be if Bethesda had included half-races. I'm sure their has been some interracial romances throughout the centuries. Had Beth done so, they could have pleased both camps of players, those wanting the diversity and true racial distinction and those who prefer aesthetically pleasing characters. Also, it would make for interesting in-game diversions and politics.

Which kinda fits in with lore, right? Accidentally or not... it's what the races in their home provinces say of the rest. :D love to you and your altmer

My Mage robe changes from white to black to green to blue depending on the angle of the camera. Oddly enough, so does my loin cloth! Any idea why or how I could fix it?

I used to use FDM and had the same problem. Since changing my browser to chrome, fdm is no longer compatible and downloads work fine. I unistalled it and went back to firefox... guess what? No problem. You probably had a similar issue. Not all sites work with download managers and accelerators, especially those that have ads before the dl initiates.

Fantastic, downloading now. Any idea if the final product will be usable with Skyrim too?

I have a feeling that going through the long-winded tutorial every time I want to try a different character is going to piss me off! An optional start or the ability to skip would be a godsend methinks.

That's not entirely true. There have been many games made with Gamebryo that didn't look horrible and weren't infested with bugs. The main problem with gamebryo was thus Bethesda's inability to work with it in a way which suited their games -- possibly because it was a middleware engine that they had Emergent cater to their needs (as is commonly the case with middleware engines). I already used the word 'revised'. Having full ownership of the engine would have course allow for a more robust usage of it, and I'm sure Bethesda has many employees capable of tweaking the engine code to far more specific levels than what they would have been offered from Emergent's services. Also, let's not forget the vast amount of user created patches and stability mods that improved on what Bethesda had done in the past -- if amateurs could make Oblivion less clunky using the CS, then that says enough about the engine's prior setup, don't you think? Also, think here the copious amount of non-optimized scripts present in all of their games since 2006, broken quests etc, also fixed by the gaming/modding community. I'm not slagging Skyrim down. I'm thoroghly enjoying it and the grade of performance v. visuals is incredible. But let's not be blinded by hype and beauty for a second and look at it under a more objective light. Just because I'm wondering if the engine is new does not immediately mean I have a problem. It means I'm curious about a specific point and wish to discuss it. I'm not complaining and I'm not looking to start a fight with anyone; I don't have an issue with it. It's just a question, and something which is occupying my mind. You can't deny the similarities (the use of .nifs is a pretty big give away; the Nif format was developed for the Gamebryo engine, formerly Netimmerse Engine) -- so, is it a highly revised, extreme overhaul of Gamebryo rather than something actually new. Somebody purchased the engine (or at least the source code and assets relating to it), this is fact. It's not unimaginable that Bethesda would have done this, given the money they have and their familiarity with the tech. When they say 'built from the ground up', they could very easily also mean, rewritten from the ground up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebryo

This engine supposedly created from the ground up and specifically for Skyrim and future Elder Scrolls Games, well, it looks and plays like gamebryo to me, or rather, a revised version of Gamebryo for New Vegas. I have to admit that it runs pretty smooth, possibly the most optimized and performance orientated Bethesda game to date (I'm running the game on 4GB DDR2, Dual Core Pentium 3.2 and GTS250; although the launcher set the game to medium, I manually switched to high and set render distances to 3 1/4 and no stutter or slowdown... smooth as silk!), the low-res textures aren't exactly noticeable until you get close up, but NV, FO3 and Oblivion had that same thing. I can't shake the feeling (perhaps it's the metal textures and reflective surfaces) that I am just playing NV circa. 1350. Is it possible that the unnamed buyer of Emergent's assets and libraries was Bethesda? Is the creation engine a re-branding of Gamebryo?

Not sure if a full overhaul would be possible, but I should imagine the transparent UI image file should be swappable

Are you using a download accelerator or download manager external to your browser?

[quote name='evertaile' timestamp='1297681149' I'm not sure I can entirely agree. The thing about game engines (and more specifically middleware engines) is that, aside from a few very basic assets and resources, they are usually little more than an out-of-the-box 3d environment with interactive floating camera. Anything else you want it to do has to be coded. Companies like Emergent usually offer a side-service where they will accept additional payment to customize the engine to a developer's needs in terms of genre specific functions that would require hardcoding and/or tweaking of the engine code. Stat and attribute games such as RPGs require vast amounts of data tables to achieve what they do in terms of player progression and growth. So while it's almost certain that Bethesda has employees capable of doing the job, it's also very likely that in order to save time and money they did use such a service. It would definitely go a long way to explain the bugs in Oblivion, because it would mean that they didn't code it from the ground up. Instead they purchased a game shell catered to their afore mentioned needs and built the game as an injection (as an esm) on top of it. Emergent would have also supplied a refined toolkit/sdk to achieve that. Probably very similar to the CS, but with a wider functionality. The reason the CS is 'gimped' as you put it is because it is the product they purchased, and to preserve their license they probably had to tighten its functions to some extent. So while it isn't representative of the actual engine, it does reflect the method that Bethesda interacted with it. If that makes sense.

Thanks for the reply. I did try different cables. Usually I run my image over the DVI, so I switched it to the VGA connector -- exactly the same result! I also thought it may be the slot, so I lowered the frequency to 90 with no difference. I've since unplugged everything else from the PSU and left the primary drive and the card connected. It's been running fine for the last hour and the monitor blinks off to 'no signal', but at least it comes back.

Hiya all, I'm having a strange problem with my system. Periodically my monitor cuts out and displays the message 'no signal' or 'signal out of range', when this occurs my graphics card's fan goes into overdrive as does the system fan; the game is still running and the sound continues normally over the speakers. Also, the system seems to continue working normally too for the rest as I can hear the familiar sounds of data being accessed by the drives etc. I've tried switching the monitor off and then back on, but it still can't get an image. I have to hold down the power button(I have no soft off/reset enabled because I have kids) and reboot. Once rebooted everything is fine as if nothing happened, apart from the Windows 7 message and login mode choice (safe mode etc etc). Also, it only does this when playing Oblivion, Fallout3, New Vegas and Divinity 2 DKS, but runs fine during DAO, or at least it hasn't done it yet. So here's where I am and what I've attempted so far: checked connectors, no issue; I've tried running Oblivion in a window so I can monitor the temperature of my card with a sidebar gadget -- it never hits above 70c, but still the screen cuts out without warning; I've run Fur Mark for 10 minutes, the card averages at 87c and the monitor doesn't cut out during; Lowered all visual settings in Oblivion to minimum - full screen the monitor cuts out after 15 minutes (exactly) in a window, randomly; I've cleaned the entire inside of my tower, removed all fans and cleaned, thoroughly blown out the PSU, cleaned all grill, and Heatsinks, it still cuts out; uninstalled my graphics drivers, reinstalled, updated, no change; inspected mobo for leaky and/or blown caps, none; switched my card for another (8800GT); same issue -- the card get a lot hotter, much faster, but the monitor cuts out in the same way, pretty much randomly at any point after 10 minutes. Now, I'm flummoxed. I have no idea what can be causing the problem. I'll describe my airflow setup: Front, 2x 12cm fans drawing air in. Rear, 1x 8cm fan exhaust. Top/rear, 1x 12cm expelling heat. Opposite CPU, 1x 8cm fan expelling. Opposite Graphics card, 1x 8cm fan expelling. When idle my card runs at 39c and hits on occasion (when watching vids and playing flash games etc) 54c... My system specs: CPU: Intel Pentium Duo 3.2GHz RAM: 4GB DDR2 800MHz Graphics: Nvidia GTS250 (1GB edition) PSU: Arctic Power 650W Thanks to any/everyone in advance.